What is Upholstery?

Upholstery is the technique of refurbishing worn furniture by replacing its parts, such as the padding, springs, webbing, fabrics or leathers.

Traditionally upholstery referred to the reparation of a piece of furniture however nowadays it is just as likely to mean creating a piece from scratch from the base materials of an older piece of furniture, completely changing its appearance to fit into any design.

The traditional upholsterer may have been responsible not only for the renewal of furniture but for many other aspects of a room’s design too.

Upholstery can be applied to all sorts of furniture, although it’s often used on sofas, couches, chairs, mattresses and headboards.

People choose their different materials based on functionality, durability, comfort and style.

A competent upholsterer can do practically anything you like with your existing furniture, and often at a significantly reduced cost

Why reupholster instead of commissioning new furniture?

Reupholstery can often be far simpler than buying new furniture as when commissioning new furniture there are so many things to consider. What’s more, this generally means you are saving time. Reupholstering a piece of furniture may take anywhere from 5-15 days, whereas commissioning bespoke furniture could take as much as 6-10 weeks.

Reupholstering can also represent significant savings too, as you already have the frame of the furniture to work with (assuming this doesn’t need treating), so you can focus your budget on selecting high quality materials and patterns.

Be sure the piece is really worth recovering

The next question is whether your furniture is appropriate for reupholstery. Probably the most important factor to consider when reupholstering is the condition of the frame of the furniture – either you should love the original shape of the frame or the structural integrity of the piece means that it will last for many more years, something far more common with well-constructed older pieces of furniture before mass-production and low-cost competitive markets.

It simply doesn’t make sense to reupholster a piece of furniture made of poor materials that will fall apart before you expect. Take photos of your furniture to share them with us so that we can help you make the decision based on our experience.